


Tracking

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-08
Updated: 2005-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River's thoughts in the middle of the movie. You'll recognize the scene as you read it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tracking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivier on LJ](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Vivier+on+LJ).



I've broken something here. I don't think I can fix it, I don't know how to begin. Will anyone be able to forgive me? Can I forgive myself? How do you bring the dead back to life? How do you get absolution if you don't even deserve it?

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Make it all go away, please.

"It's not like I never loved you," she sobbed before I left. "It's not like I never cared. I did. I just couldn't love you, not like you needed." She didn't want me there, didn't want me around, had been glad to see me go. She didn't trust the looks behind my eyes, the draw of her beloved son to me. I was to be pulled by the sun and moon, not become it myself. She didn't trust this strange thing I was becoming.

Once away, I knew it couldn't be what they promised. It was never a question of running away. It was only a question of when. And how. But never why. It was too obvious for that. Everyone else seemed to know why except for the players involved.

It was usually like that.

Now I sit grafted to metal grating, listening to soft whispers through the hull. There was a last soft light of hope. A last chance at redemption, if they didn't blow it this time.

Time. Time was such a small, little thing. It never occurred to them that it was so important, so easily lost.

I feel their fear beneath their smiles; my skin crawls with it. I know what say without the words being said. My heart shakes, my breath catches. I feel the Academy at my back, the bitter acid taste of fear on my tongue. I feel them, vibrating in my bones, spectacularly beautiful and wonderful, brilliant surprise bursting in above me. I lie against the grating, reality pressing in, names against my mind, hovering, waiting to envelop me, enclosing in its midst.

I don't know what I'm saying. I never know what I'm saying.

The air changes, shifts around me, content moving fluidly from one moment to the next. Give me a mission, any mission. My previous lives held them close, whispering in my ears. _Lie down, accept, take it all in and lie down._ And the other life, the one they gave me, screams. _Never, never lie down, taste you, fear and blood and misery, flesh between my hands, blood slick and slippery and sliding down my palms._ Tunnel down into the heart of me, blooded and ready, sitting still and placed in the midst of a fortress.

Hide me, bind me, shiver and shake, pin me down with spears so fine they bleed me.

I feel this fear along my skin, and it burns.

They don't listen to Cassandra's cries, the prophecy of ages bent and broken beneath the weight of the 'verse.

The chains are cold iron, but the fey are already encased in the bone of my skull.

"You mean you've had her on my boat for the past eight months and not said a word?" Mal yelled at Simon.

Mal, meaning bad, from the Latin. And Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair, gave him a broken girl in a cold ice box and sent him on his way. They try to protect the broken girl, sliced apart, left to her own devices. But the demon lurks inside the girl, veteran to the battles of the soul, and no one saw her until it was too late. Simple Simon didn't catch her; he couldn't see what he couldn't believe. It was always a matter of belief, and now this girl believes in everything.

Late at night, after the fight, dim the light, riposte and deflect, attack and defend, the countercurrent and anticlockwise, dim sagacity coming close to hand.

_It's me,_ he said, amidst the hands that touched. They reached out for me, wanting to pin me down, touch and grope and push more needles in my eyes. Fear dances along my spine -- _I have to protect my spine!_ \-- and I snap the chains in twain. Fear pulls at me, draws me in, twists and coats itself in bile. My fear, his fear, our fear, their fear; it's all one and the same, adrenaline sharp. Contamination, reverberation, far from the crowded thoughts and celebration. I shiver in the cold, the fear, sharp acid bile and blades. He brings me blades, though he knows it not. He doesn't understand what he brings to me, stone, heart, blade and steel, bullets in the brainpan if I need it. He thinks to set me free, set me far away and isolate, unable to act against the masses, turn them on each other. I would not Reaver them, I would not bite or scratch; there are other uses beneath my skin but they remain ensconced in gray matter and lie unfulfilled.

Make me, break me, shake me. Set me free, set me down, far from the madding crowd, away from the massive secrets that gravitate and draw me in.

Miranda beckons, silent graves and silent voices. _Free us,_ they cry. _Release us from decayed flesh!_

I feel you, steel-hearted stone. I feel you coming, your concern sharp and tasting like edged steel. You are steel, you are stone, and you carry your heart encased in steel to protect the battered soul within. You don't want me to touch it, but I can if I want to.

I am multitalented and multitracked and I can do anything I want to.

I can win this. Physics and math.

I can do this, coiled to spring.

I shake, waiting, tracking, killer instinct lying in wait, crackling.

Track one – freezing cold, environmental controls on cooldown. False night sets in, following the chronometer of a dead planet left behind centuries before. Track two – simmering air, tasting recycled and rather like the scrubbers. They need changing, too much to pay for unless there's a big job. Track three – downshifting deckplates as manual controls are relegating to automatic. Wash is planning to settle in for the night. Track four – Zoe waits, wearing nothing. The need to revel in flesh, to confirm that they are still alive and remain so. Zoe would never lie down. Track five – Kaylee dreams, the glare of machinery behind her eyes. She would lie down; she hasn't the taste for blood or the flesh for steel. Track six – Simple Simon holds his heart in his hands. He aches for the smile he doesn't understand and the heart he does not own. He is too awake for his own good, too confident he holds the means to stop my madness. Track seven – the Latin bad lies awake with fear as his Companion. He wishes she was soft, someone to rest his head upon. He never left Serenity Valley; it lives beneath sinew and bone. Track eight – Jayne approaches, heart in his mouth. He fears and understands me. Girl and weapon, blood and bone, mind and soul. Dichotomy enveloped in a single problematic package. He seeks to turn her loose, to let her upon the black reaches of emptiness. _Don't hurt us none._

Miranda haunts me. _Free us!_

I tense, coiled, ready to strike. I have one chance and one chance only, and I mean to take it. I'm sorry, Jayne, but I have to.

***  
***


End file.
